


Middle Before the End

by samarqand



Category: Ex Machina
Genre: Closeted Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 21:46:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarqand/pseuds/samarqand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amid allegations against his qualifications to be Mayor Mitchell Hundred’s Head of Security, Rick A. Bradbury disses Superman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Middle Before the End

**1.**

They say the Hell Gate Bridge will be the last bridge in New York City to fall once humanity vanishes from the earth. A decade ago, before Rick and Mitchell knew each other, the city lavished a fresh coat of paint on the stout swell of steel, calling the earthy shade “Hell Gate Red.”

In a month or so, the curtain of foliage hiding the roiling Hell Gate strait and the bridges striped across Gracie Mansion's view will be just exhausted junk to rake up.

The annual barbecue for volunteers and high-profile attendees of Dominican Day trundles to an end in the Mansion's freshly manicured garden. 

Rick keeps his sunglasses on, head down. He scans his tight security detail lining the perimeter of the Mansion grounds. The skyline never held any promise for him,save that the regal grey span of the Triboro would be gashed by the gates to Hell.

The city itself said that if he invited the insinuation of evil, it would build itself a home there. It would swim across the strait. It would find him and hold him under. The city was a myriad of households. Every door that let him in, he was reminded. 

He had known families. He had played the role of son to them until around the third time he got it right, until he was ready to believe what they told him.

Filial piety. He'd been good, sometimes.

A little boy near the side entrance has begun crying. It could be a wasp sting. Rick pushes his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and rolls his neck. He spots the back of Mitchell’s head as he canoodles with Miss Dominican Republic and her event coordinators. 

Rick begins to count, out of professional curiosity, how many pairs of eyes are following the mayor in this moment, what fraction of the world is noting his every move.

He loses count somewhere after eight, sick at the sight of that ruddy bridge troubling the distance. Curtly, he advises his detail to take his place on the second floor. He isn’t cut out for VIP views.

 

 **2.**

There are so many stories he could tell Mitchell, about life before Mitchell, or life alongside him. The things he does unseen in-between the nights over at Gracie Mansion, memorizing the nighttime sprawl of grounds. What his associates say when they think the press won't hear. What happens on lunch break. 

He doesn’t. He never liked storytelling. Stories have always railed against him.

Case in point:

PR connects the City Hall website’s visitors with a nice blurb on Rick Bradbury. January Moore had been tasked with inflecting integrity into Rick’s testimony the moment Mitchell stopped by his office in the evening and groaned, “Home at last.”

From a journalistic standpoint, it isn’t half as sexy as the small tell-all off in the back corner of yesterday’s _Metro_ , some indignant graduate from Westpoint with a couple big names on his resume, calling nepotism on Mayor Hundred’s swift dismissal of a couple old muscles when he took the reigns. 

The op-ed mused, Who is this Rick Bradbury, snatching up prestige once bestowed upon men and women with decades of expertise in the service of the city’s security. 

He looks too dumb to run such an operation.

(Mitchell had drawn a faint red line with his knuckle across his forehead and set down the paper that morning, before the Dominican Day events. He’d gazed up at the heavens prayerfully, and then said, “Fucking middle school-level maturity-having fuckasses.”)

Bradbury’s history with Mitchell has turned into a shared delusion between the two of them. Friendship doesn’t make bulwarks. Friendship twists when found in the wrong places. And this friendship, this favor between friends, is going to rise up someday soon like a miserable Lazarine tragedy and bite Mitchell in the ass.

This is what the sour article maintains. 

Bradbury’s small blurb, meanwhile, rattles off a quick list of achievements and affirms his long-standing commitment to the city's safety. It can’t cry foul, because the foundations of the op-ed aren’t falsities.

“Bullshit,” Mitchell barks. He careens backward from where he'd overseen January’s work, and January spins around in her chair with a measure of defiance. “This is New York. ‘Slander’ is our fucking catchcry. What, we won’t even publicly dismiss a public smack in the face? They’re degrading my head of security’s work, here. _Our_ security!”

January tempers her tone. “People mud-sling off the campaign trail, too. It’s going to keep happening. In fact, to try to match it head-on… I’m not sure we could spin it in a way that would help our cause.”

“Can we put in our own op-ed?”

“We could," she allows. "But if we prioritize everything else due out in writing tomorrow and the day after, it’s going to come out a little tardy, which wouldn't be professional. That is, on top of the other cons.”

Mitchell rubs at his nose. He blinks at the computer screen. He scratches at his head, awkwardly. “This is really unfair.”

“That’s politics.” January catches herself. “Sir, I could write the op-ed for you, if you still — “

“No. No. Just — “ He waves his hand, turning away from the computer screen. “The profile’s important right now. Where is he? Bradbury.”

“Six PM? Probably getting started on the activity report,” January tells him. “Four ‘menacing threats’ against you this week. He’ll have a lot to cover.”

“Got a ways to go before I call it a day,” Bradbury mutters, tearing another report form from his stack and beginning to fill in obvious blanks. “‘S what happens when you’re not a nine-to-five mayor, you fuckin’ hermit.”

Mitchell snorts and glances about the security staff room. Two of his four guards, their ties loosened and sunglasses removed, glance at him with a small amount of wonder. “Sir,” they greet him, straightening as they pass. 

“Common folk can’t handle it,” Rick remarks, catching Mitchell’s knitted brows. “Seeing you down in the fluorescent lighting.”

“Well, Jesus, everyone looks like a ghoul under lights like these.” Mitchell leans against Rick’s desk, and Rick’s pen stops moving.

“They don’t get why it’s you,” Mitchell blurts out, unheeded. “And they wanna tear you down ‘cause they don’t get it. That drives me up the wall, God’s sake.”

Rick leans back in his chair and stretches. “I don’t get why this is still issue number one for you, boss.”

“They made it personal, those motherfuckers. They’re attacking regular people.”

“We ain’t regular people, boss.”

Mitchell throws up his hands. “Fucking — just, remember the way the Clinton administration had to contend with all that shit on Chelsea? The press tore her to shreds. Only reason? She was an easy target, an easy way to sting the powers that be. Her hair, her clothes, her grades at school — all up for degradation, every goddamn bit of her identity, just because it made a titillating story. Do you remember that?”

“It was fucked up,” Rick says. “But all due respect, I’m no little girl, boss. I’m not running home crying and I’m not clutching my gay-ass pearls over criticism.”

“Sure, great,” Mitchell says, suddenly perturbed. “Whatever. But I’m done seeing garbage like this on my desk in the morning. I’m busy enough.”

“Funny shit, so am I.” Rick weaves his pen through his fingers. "Let's forget it ever happened."

Who are they kidding, they’ll be forever locked in a squid-whale battle for decent PR. Mitchell will never adapt to pivot around the brickbatters. He comes at them swinging instead.

And that’s the way he goes down.

Because he can’t block a jab worth shit; because he crosses his arms to shield himself; because he throws one leg over the other in a silent display of his distrust of anyone who shows interest, or maybe of himself; because his smile goes out with the lights; and he aches to be asleep only so he can be awake sooner.

Mitchell smiles his big administrative smile. “Then get back to your homework. Gracie Mansion needs you tonight.” 

“Ambassador in the guest room. I got the memo, boss. That’s not why you’re down here in the shit.”

“I’m always in the shit,” Mitchell grouses. He rolls back his shoulders and canters on out when Candy calls for him.

He doesn’t explain himself, because he deserves hallowed spaces where he doesn’t need to. All this talk of combat.

Maybe a place to lay down the armor is all one could ask for in this life. Maybe Mitchell has found it here, where his pristine shoes clop on scratched unfinished wood.

Maybe that’s wrong, and Rick only seeks interception, because he’s finally been exposed as a posturing fucking cunt with no assets, because he's outlived his own use.

Because even his wars rolled on nicely without him, a world away. 

Because anyone could tackle a mayor in the name of defense and slip the cartridge into the gun and eat a stupid fucking hot dog behind the wheel of the mayor’s car and be paid handsomely for it. 

Anyone could be the faceless tool Mitchell asks to drive him home.

 

**3.**

He drives Mitchell home. 

Mitchell tells him how his day has been.

“Please let the ambassador be asleep,” Mitchell intones to finish, a little voice from the lonely back seat.

“It’s stupid o’clock,” Rick reads off the digital on his dashboard. “By the way, I’d be a fucking traitor if I didn’t tell you that pulling out those antique city plans for the Lower East Side at half past eleven was a transparent-as-damn design to wait him out.”

“What’s wrong with looking to the past to see the goddamn future,” Mitchell says. “Everyone likes maps.”

“Don’t suppose any of ‘em remembered Collect Pond.”

“No. The park?" Mitchell leans in, poking his head up into the front. "Why is it that my own fucking slumber party entitles only half the party to sleep, anyway? If whoever the ambassador brought with him asks why I'm a shitty host, tell them I came down with something.”

“An allergic reaction to responsibility.”

“Get creative, Bradbury,” Mitchell protests. “Lie a little.”

“Sure, but so, the Collect Pond _pond_ ,” Rick explains, casting a furtive glance in the rear-view for any sign of recognition from Mitchell. “You know how they drained it and built the Tombs over it, riding along with the Five Points era. And the prison just began tilting and sinking into the pit like the fuckin’ Titanic. All marsh and no bedrock for shit there. But they kept on ushering convicts into that freaky funhouse, ‘cause what the hell. All flooded and decrepit, guess it was what they deserved. But still, imagine seeing people trapped in a deranged mess like that, huh? The torture's the roof above your head. It’s like an old-timey Scared Straight campaign.”

“Remember the time you went to get coffee at the deli and came back with blood on your shoes?”

Rick chuckles. 

The road has clotted fantastically with all this humanity. He thumps down on the horn when a taxi swerves in front of him. Night like a visor, carrying him to anonymity. He might as well be floating in space. 

“No, seriously. What the fuck happened to you?”

He doesn’t need to be anywhere, not now; not even on a tour of duty when he was on a tour of duty, back when he was the one calling forth the fire in absence of anyone wanting him to do anything else. 

He’d overseen the death of two civilians. They’d thrown rocks, not grenades. 

Perhaps the only time in his life want had become perceptible to him. He proffered blood sacrifice for it. He damned himself for it. 

He’d wanted, in the death thrumming in his temples and the dark raining soil, every name he had ever spoken to be safe. 

Learn to block a haymaker and the way to click-trick-pull a glock till its matter is your matter. All living things have mass. You could survive on duty and muscle memory alone, forget your body as anything but an intercession, forget you wanted to be anything, anywhere.

“I did my job.”

 

**4.**

Mitchell crooks his finger at Rick like he has a secret to divulge, framed by the open door.

He’d tossed his suit jacket somewhere despicable to be whisked away by the Mansion’s insomniac attendants, like some shameful Gracie family secret. 

If he steals a moment to behave as a regular person would at an hour like this, he has proof that he has learned to juggle Professional and Personal. Regularity features television, something featuring a lot of people sitting in semi-circle debating celebrity baby names; regularity features coffee table books about exotic flora; regularity features an intimate huddle of friends with stories swapped eagerly.

But it’s lights out: the house creaks under the blanket of silence, the ambassador’s security detail seems interested in their plans for the next day and hence are to be avoided at all costs, and Mitchell only has Rick, and Rick doesn’t have his own stories to tell.

Mitchell cannot seem anymore undaunted by any of this. He looks positively giddy to be sneaking around his own home, cast in the dim of city light residue, sliding a carton of cigarettes out of his pocket for Rick to see. 

“I’ll spare myself ten minutes before I beat myself for being awake,” Mitchell murmurs reasonably. “Smoke?”

“You’re committed to the cause, boss,” Rick marvels.

“Don’t you fucking start worrying about my health. I do enough of that for this world and the next three.”

“Nope. Something tells me you ain’t jonesing for the nicotine so much as a quick escape.”

After a reflectional moment, Mitchell says, “Well, shit. What else are balconies there to do.” 

Chill dives far out over the empty lawn and into the churning waters. The promise of an early winter hanging on the scaffolding.

They take the last words outside:

“It is nepotism, boss,” Rick confirms. “They got it right.”

“— Jesus! Then call me Mitchell. We’re after-hours,” says Mitchell. “You make a single man the face of an entire city, you’d better have some faith in his personal connections. The company I keep are the very same keeping this goddamn monster afloat.”

Rick fishes a zippo out of his pocket. “Or manning the lifeboats when hizzoner wants off.”

“Thanks,” Mitchell tells him, “by the way.” The cigarette bounces on his lower lip as he leans in for the tenuous flame. Orange hearth-warmth glows at the end of his cigarette and he breathes in quickly, just a half-drowned gasp to regain vitality.

“Say you ever curried the favor of the comic-loving contingent, you might even have strength of character on your side.”

Rick rests his weight against the frigid railing, newly painted and unforgiving against his back. He mutters around his cigarette: “I’ve read comics.”

Mitchell’s gaze had almost found Hell Gate Bridge. He forgets what he was looking for, looks up. “What? Really. Have you? Bradbury. These’re the stories you’re supposed to — “

“On every tour I did.”

He raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth, looking painfully interested. 

“No story to tell,” Rick says blithely. “You’re out in the wasteland trying to figure out how the hell you got there, and what measure of good it’s doin’ anybody. So you pick up comics. They’re the best security binkie available way out in the shit. Familiar, see.”

“Superman,” Mitchell suggests.

“Captain America,” Rick corrects him.

Mitchell cracks his neck. ”God,” he says. ”Goddammit. You’re a Marvel guy.” He turns back out to that world-class view, that conqueror’s sight, to digest this. 

Rick follows only so far as the smoke curls out of Mitchell’s mouth before he exhales. 

“Hallelujah, I’m not a nepotist anymore,” proclaims Mitchell dispassionately. “I’ll let the _Metro_ know our friendship’s over.”

“I’ll say, you flaming nerd.”

Mitchell chews on his cigarette. “… You should’ve tried Superman,” he laments.

“He ain’t Captain America.”

“He’s — he’s more than Captain America! He stands for everything Cap stands for… and _more_!”

Rick frowns deeply. “He’s a friggin’ alien! Not even from a real planet!”

Mitchell recoils, nearing offense. “I know. Great, isn’t it?”

“No. That’s his problem. That’s what makes him a boring read.”

Mitchell covers his ears. “You didn’t just say that to me. I swear to God.” 

Rick raises his hands. “I don’t give a rip about an alien. Cap’s a human, and he fights like the rest of us. He suffers like a human being. He’s got… the same stakes. How’s that?”

Mitchell puffs away darkly. 

Rick drums his fingers across the blazing-cold metal, imprinting temperature into his fingerprints. “He’s strong as fuck, sure. But he honed all that crazy power down to his own — his own personal martial art. He made it worth more than just a good roundhouse.”

Mitchell raises a finger. “Superman! Superman, too! He can do anything. He can do everything, so he _does_ everything to put all that fucking — glory in him to real use.” 

Rick twists his mouth to hide a smile. “Yeah? Dude can do anything, no sweat. Dude can break the universe if he wants to. Good for him. What’s so impressive about that?”

“That he _doesn’t_ , Bradbury.”

It’s then that the swarm of the ambassador’s security decides to check the balcony, find them both there, hunched and intent and cabalistic. 

Mitchell straightens, commercial conventionality back in his smile and his strained gait when he follows them back inside to brief them on tomorrow’s send-off for the ambassador.

Rick doesn’t look behind him. He keeps entries and exits covered with a methodical eye until Mitchell has sequestered himself in his bedroom.

Then he fills in his own charges with their responsibilities for the next four hours, and finds an empty guest room for himself. He pulls a spare blanket over himself where he lies on a couch.

He’d seen snow in Baghdad once. The Corps had thought it was ash, because it seemed too good to be true. And for a moment, everything out in the waste they had wrought looked familiar because everyone in Baghdad felt the same: the promise of one shared joy, snow’s fall. 

Two days later he did recon in Khafji with a burnt-out regiment, support artillery in tow. They slung howitzers to their missions, dragged them along like crosses they would bear. They hid, sometimes, in the shadow of those leviathan structures, small sanctuaries wandering through the shattered cities, where bright flame fell from the sky and sent them running to the embrace of the dark. Let us be unknown. Let us be simply components. Anything else could break under the immensity of so many wishes.

 

**5.**

Mitchell crooks his finger at Rick like he has a secret to divulge. The lights have gone off with him. He holds light in his gaze, afire.

His lips parted, he leans in.

They don’t touch. They never touch. They touched once, in his old surging tub rocking with the force of the explosion that nearly killed Mitchell, and once in the hospital when Mitchell, alone in his white hospital gown with his gaze dim behind bandages, shook with pain.

They don’t touch. That is against the rules. They have rules. That’s what makes them work so efficiently together, like —

Mitchell leans in close, tie undone, looking undone, like he’s been fucked, like he wants to be fucked.

“Do you want this?” he breathes, thumbing at his belt. He loosens the buckle. He blinks slowly, smile half-thought on his lips. And those eyes. 

He slips a hand down his trousers, bracing himself with a hand on Rick’s desk, looking unsteadied with —

Rick has pitched forward in his chair, fists clenched, his mouth hanging open as he watches.

“Do you want this?” he breathes. He reaches behind his tousled hair and finds the invisible seam, tears it with a deafening scrape, peels off flesh and bone and muscle mass and offers up blood-wet cogs and wheels and their great roaring turbines. 

Brain is a black box. 

Eyes operate as clean marbles coiled against steel plates. 

Piston engines humming songs. And dance: one scheduled blink, then two. Rhythm, alarm clock buzz in his head. The black box records. The black box forgets the words. Hum along.

Green, his eyes parenthesize. In what life or the next three will you find this green? In this great dark night?

One eye clicks shut, and then the other punctuates. 

Full stop.

 

**6.**

Mitchell is in the bathroom.

Rick crouches near the door.

When Mitchell emerges, mid-yawn, looking half-dressed for work but ready to go back to sleep, Rick ushers him aside with a shoulder and closes the door behind him.

“Wuh oh,” Mitchell narrates between their wooden barrier.

Rick gags himself, feels panic sickening the spaces between bone when he fails. Tries again. Feels relief when it works.

“Are you — “ Muzzily, only beginning to catch on.

“I’m sick,” Rick tries out loud.

“Shit.” Sympathetic. “Can I get you something? You want — uhhh — “

“No.”

“Yes,” Mitchell snaps, muffled.

Rick vomits again, half-hearted, more of a choking with no hands. He flushes the toilet.

Double tap. Then a low crawl to be safe. High crawl to grandstand. Stop, observe. Shoot. Crawl. Look. Shoot. Crawl. Look. Shoot.

Impolite thud at the door, that will be Mitchell using his elbow. “I’ll bring you a… compress,” he says dumbly. “Bradbury?” 

He should stick his head under warm water to give himself a temperature. That’d really ham it up.

“I’m fine, boss.”

“Mitchell. My name is Mitchell, sweet Jesus.” Clipped. 

“Mitch, I’m fine.” 

“Come out.”

“Go back to sleep.”

The wood scratches on the other side of the door. Sounds like mice scraping at the walls. Sounds like boots on sand. He doesn’t say this to Mitchell. He leans his head against the toilet seat. “Take the day off,” Mitchell suggests. “I can find someone else with a driver’s license.”

“You can’t send me packing over an upset stomach, Mitch.”

Silence suggested Mitchell had left him for sleep. He could swear on it. Just left.

Then: “It better not be food poisoning, you dick,” Mitchell warns him. “That’d put a damper on the whole inter-cultural exchange I had going on.”

“Nah,” Rick says, remotely. Just go. “Caribbean food’s infallible.”

“Fuck’s sake, I’m trying to give you paid leave. Just take it,” the door implores him.

“I’ll work it out.”

“Whatever! Fine. Then I'd better see you in an hour.”

Rick lowers the toilet cover and sits. 

He shudders, just once. Quietly, he passes his hand over his face, feeling hollow, as if he has lived three lives at once. 

Strangers came to greet him in a place where he couldn’t raise his arms to fight. It wasn’t his life. It wasn’t himself.

It’s only then that Mitchell leaves, footsteps careful on soft wood, caution under his thorns.

 

**7.**

He drives Mitchell to work. 

“Don’t be an ass,” Mitchell calls from the backseat. “Everyone likes playing hooky. I’m giving you the chance, here.”

“We’re already halfway through Midtown, boss,” Rick glibly says. “I won. Let it be.”

“Feel okay?”

“Hunky-dory.”

“So. Superman.”

“Wait,” Rick says, and rolls down the window to gag theatrically. Mitchell snap-kicks the back of his seat and scoots over to the middle to be heard.

“I was saying last night — I was saying, about Supes, he could do anything he wanted. I get that. What’s great is that he chooses not to.”

Rick’s fingers hover over the radio dials. “What, so he gets an award for not being a jackass?”

“No! No, dammit! Listen!” Mitchell breathes in, pauses. “He could — “ He gestures futilely, Rick catches him in the periphery. “He could chew us up, spit us out, he could assfuck this world and just fuck us all over in a millisecond before moving on to the next. He can get the girl. He can get whatever he wants. He could make it all so — fucking easy on himself. Easy. But that’s the thing, he — “

“You’re gay for Superman, I get it,” Rick declares. He receives a sloppy thunk, knuckles against the top of his head. Okay, that makes him laugh.

“He…” Mitchell soldiers through. 

Rick can imagine him right now, as he searches for explicability, for the ineffable meaning. Where is the torch to illuminate. 

His hands must be grasping the seat, plucking at the leather. Frustration, devotion. 

He must be searching for a sign to speak by, eyes wide open.

“He could just — go. He could leave the world for better or worse, mold it in his image or just let us fuck ourselves over. And this is the thing: he doesn’t.

“What he wants is to do right by those — those insignificant little humans who surround him. Stupid, fearful humans without an iota of his potential or his grace, and yet here he wants to be — of them. And among them. Because he knows they — he has faith in the good hidden in them. He wants to be worthy of that… rare, precious goodness.

“It’s hard to find. But that’s what makes him step down here to raise us up, helping us to search ourselves for goodness before we lose it forever. 

“Because to fight to see it, that’s a challenge for a man who can do anything. And then he does it, he wins, and goodness begins its ascent… and that’s the greatest reward. In spite of ourselves… we can make it happen sometimes. Good. That’s what makes our short lives on this useless planet so — so remarkable. That sometimes we can be good. 

“We must be the only miracle Superman has ever seen.”

Rick watches him through the rear-view. Mitchell has let out a tense breath, has let the scenery fly past his eyes. Still green. It’s still green out.

Rick keeps silent long into the drive downtown, until Mitchell tells the radio to speak up. “‘Superman’ meaning you.”

He catches Mitchell smile, sudden. He knows the look on Mitchell’s face. Where there is too much to say, so you leave it alone.

Mitchell does say, “I might have to give you a raise.”

“Yeah?”

“No. That would be nepotism.”

Everything in its place. If it were always just so, there would be no hunger.

He has nowhere he would be, and nothing he would tell. He keeps his hands closed. He keeps on the road. And it’s okay. Sometimes, it’s good.

What could he ask of the universe but for this life. This life, here.


End file.
